PhD student in spider behavioural ecology and evolution

[Late] Week 3 – Regret is the MacDonalds of my PhD

Have spent the past five days moving and getting sorted at a new flat which still has no internet. End result is that I couldn’t get into university soon enough this morning (lies). Spent the day putting together a research proposal for my DoC permit to collect Cambridgea reinga from three sites up North. While I understand why they’re asking me to provide such precise details about my practically non-existent research and require me to fill out a >10 page document + attachments which covers a wide range of potential activities that I may conduct at the site – trying to be specific about research that I haven’t even planned feels like pushing mashed potato through a pasta machine.

On the other hand, it’s a good exercise to do and I need to apply the same practice to the project as a whole. If there isn’t already something called ‘third week dip’ then I want to then I want to propose the idea that my productivity and therefore mood in the next three years is going to cycle with a period of three – four weeks. Will have to see whether things pan out this way.

So where am I at? Well I’m getting to the stage where there’s only so much more literature review I can do before it starts becoming unproductive. I’m reluctant to start formulating hypotheses and experiments until I’ve actually gotten a handle on some of the things that the buggers do and on how difficult it’s going to be for me to collect enough spider species for molecular analyses.

Side note: It still surprises me exactly how blase other PhD students are about how often they feel miserable during the course of their project.